For the first time the guests from Russia arrived to an event of such a grand scale. Lia Levina, the organiser of the Childrens’ programme at Sverdlovsk Jewish Cultural Centre ‘Atikva’ shared her impressions.

"We had come to the ‘Freilehe kinder’ festival for the first time. We have a vocal and dance group. This group is very young, and it was our debut on the big stage. Before that, we had mainly performed in Ekaterinburg at our Cultural Centre at various cultural celebrations and other events, and we had never had guests from other cities. Our visit to Kazakhstan is our first experiment."

Olga Goldman, the director of ‘Atikva’ Vocal Ensemble added, "I liked most of the performances and the way the festival was organised as a whole. However, I think that there is a need for additional time for rehearsals to allow the performers to get accustomed to the stage. The rehearsals started very early, and there was very limited time for the children to get used to the new settings. Despite all this, I think that our performance went very well. Lia Levina said, "There were some small things which I thought could be better. But as this festival was a very large event, it would have been impossible to foresee everything that could go wrong. For example, we were not informed that we were required to prepare a greeting for the opening of the festival, and we had to improvise right before going on the stage. As all others were prepared well in advance, we felt uncomfortable as a result. There was a number of such setbacks, but they were only minor and did not count."

Alexandra Yazykova, one of the participants, said, "I like it here. I made friends with others from Kustanay, Astrakhan, talked to children from other cities. On the whole I had a lot of fun. I like Kazakhstan’s nature, the endless steppes and the charming starry night sky."